Get Your Game Up. Lets Play!

Microsoft debuted the first Anthem gameplay footage at E3 2017, showing off BioWare’s brand new title running on the recently-announced Xbox One X. While the Xbox One X is due out this November, Anthem won’t be releasing until 2018. We’ll update this page with all the essential info, including the Anthem Release Date and Pre-Order details, so keep checking back.

Anthem Essential Information:

Release Date: Fall 2018

Price: TBC $60

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One

Developer: BioWare

Publisher: EA

Genre: Online Multiplayer Open World Shooter

Anthem Confirmed to be a ’10-year’ Project for EA and BioWare

EA has talked about how long it sees the Anthem project running between EA and BioWare, with comments from EA vice president Patrick Soderlund on the Xbox Daily Show being reminiscent of how Activision talked about Destiny – a game many people expect Anthem to resemble.

“[Anthem is] a social game where you and your friends go out on quests and journeys,” said Soderlund (via Eurogamer). “It’s a game that we’ve been working on for almost four years now. And it’s a game that – once we launch it next year – will be the start of maybe a 10-year journey for us.”

There was some speculation that the Anthem gameplay demo shown during Microsoft’s E3 2017 conference was in fact running on PC. This has now been debunked, with EA’s Patrick Soderlund telling Digital Foundry that the demo was in fact a real-time demo running on Xbox One X.

It’s also been confirmed that Drew Karpyshyn, a BioWare veteran who has worked as a designer and writer on multiple projects including Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 (lead writer), is working on Anthem. That’s good news for anyone worried the game would eschew narrative in favour of multiplayer combat.

Digital Foundry also took a look at Anthem running on the Xbox One X, and examined whether the game could in fact deliver on the promise of native 4K gaming on the console.

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Anthem Release Date

Finally, the release window of 2018 was given for Anthem, which means it will likely be releasing towards the latter half of the year, given how everything else that was slated for a 2018 release in Microsoft’s presentation were all denoted by ‘Spring 2018’. The official YouTube page for Anthem gives a Fall 2018 release date.

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This is the debut trailer for Anthem from BioWare.

It should also be noted that, although Anthem gameplay was shown off for the very first time at Microsoft’s presentation, there is no exclusivity deal for the game whatsoever. Anthem will be releasing on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

Brand New Anthem Gameplay Reveal

As the Anthem gameplay demo began, we found ourselves in a futuristic market setting. The futuristic nature of Anthem was largely revealed during a brief teaser in EA’s presentation on June 10, but this was the first time we actually got a proper look at the world in which Anthem would be taking place.

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The Anthem gameplay demo, confirmed to be running on Xbox One X, looked amazing.

The gameplay demo began in first person mode (although the game is played from a third-person perspective), as the player was approached by another character, requesting their help with a matter outside The Wall, which is said to shield all of humanity from the dangers of the vast, open world.

Accepting the mission, our character got into an Exosuit, which was revealed to be the more all-round version named Ranger, while our partner got into an Exosuit type named Colossus, this latter model being the tank class of the game.

The Exosuits, or Javelins, as the commentary called them, allow for humans to gain superhuman abilities, for example being able to fly or propel themselves underwater, as well as special abilities like missile barrages, and a shockwave that at one point the Colossus class sent out.

It looks like there’ll be a loot angle for Anthem, as at one point the main character picked up a new, better weapon off the corpse of a fallen enemy, and both her and the character in the Colossus Javelin remarked at how much nicer this weapon was. Perhaps the character of Anthem are in on the whole ‘farming’ items joke.

The weather, while out in the wide open world, can also have a dramatic affect on each of your missions. We saw a severe storm interrupt the gameplay in this demo of Anthem, as all plans went completely out of the window, and all the main human characters were forced to beat a hasty retreat and shelter from the storm.

An extremely varied set of wildlife can also be found throughout the open world, as while some are friendly, others will attack you on sight. We saw several smaller, horse-like creatures galloping past the two characters at one point, only for a few of them to be lifted up into the air and killed by a far larger monster, which the humans then had to make a quick retreat from.

We’re at E3 2017 covering the year’s biggest gaming event. Be sure to check out all our coverage on our E3 2017 hub!

This might be all the information we have to go for now with Anthem, but make sure to keep this page in mind, as we’ll be updating it with all future info that we obtain on the game.

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